At the recent American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting in Chicago, Dr. Kent McGregor examined the current Texas drought and its relationship to El Niño Southern Oscillation. This phenomenon, also known as ENSO, consists of both warm (referred to as El Niño) and cool (referred to as La Niña) phases. During the El Niño phase, a band of warm ocean water develops in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific. During the La Niña phase, sea surface temperatures in the eastern Pacific are cooler than average.

Interested in the extreme drought that hit the State of Texas in 2011, and which qualified as the second worst in the last 120 years (exceeded only by the 1950s drought of record), McGregor found that since 1950 about half of all Texas droughts ended with increased rainfall during winter into spring El Niño events. Although weak in strength, when an El Niño developed in the Pacific in March 2015, McGregor was pleased to find that it did bring rain to Texas. The associated increase in rainfall helped to raise lake levels from 65% to 75%.

Currently, most, but not all of the state, is not affected by drought conditions. This research is important because the lag time between development of El Niño conditions in the Pacific and the increase in precipitation in the Southwest has implications for water resource management decisions in the region.

For more information on Dr. Kent McGregor, please visit https://geography.unt.edu/faculty/kent-mcgregor